"To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." Elbert Hubbard

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." G.K. Chesterton

"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant." Horace

Today's image: Liberty by shinyobject. Great shooting. Thanks for sharing.

Wayback machine: Michael Crichton made a prediction in 1993. He wrote a Wired magazine essay titled "Mediasaurus" wherein he predicted the death of mass media, to wit: "...American media produce a product of very poor quality...It's flashy but it's basically junk." Crichton suggested future consumers would crave high quality information and be willing to pay for it. Jack Shafer revisits the writing via Slate here.

Remembering radio: A lot of chatter about radio this week. Here are a few items that may help to put things into perspective.

"Radio is Doomed"
Headline from Look magazine
[April 26, 1949, p. 66]

"Any law forcing a sameness of radio, forcing a programming common denominator, acts as a protection to the talentless, a shield for the lazy, a haven for the idea thief, a legal shelter and sanction for the mediocre."

Gordon McLendon
[As quoted, Gordon McLendon: The Maverick of Radio by Ronald Garay]

"I have never bought a radio station for other than one reason: because I believed I could improve its programming and make it a success...Our philosophy in deciding whether to buy a certain station in a certain market has always been: Is there some program service of utility to a large enough group here that is either (a) not now being provided or (b) not being provided as well as we can provide it?"

Gordon McLendon
[ As quoted, The Development of the Top 40 Radio Format by David MacFarland]

"There were people doing things, both commercially and noncommercially, that were very exciting and wonderfully off the wall. And at times awful. But it was based on risk-taking, something that is antithetical to almost any radio now."
Larry Yurdin

"...a new kind of novel that he writes nightly. The mike is his pen and paper. His audience and their knowledge of the daily events of the world provide his characters, his scenes and moods."
Marshall McLuhan
[speaking of the show by WOR talent Jean Shepherd]

"I like disc jockeys that are essentially groupies, who love their music and take it home with them and are involved with it to a degree that approaches fanaticism."
Tom Donahue

"All research does is give you answers to questions you ask...It's up to you to know that you're asking the right questions...Far too often, research is used to be noncreative."
John Parikhal

Bonus: Video impresario Michael Rosenblum is on a mission. One you should be paying attention to...

"...when you walk into the New York Times, every single person in the building, from the receptionist to the publisher knows how to read and write. They also have a word processing machine on their desktop. If they get an idea, they are encouraged to write. Adam Liptak, corporate lawyer for the paper often also reports on legal matters for the paper. It is a hive of literacy and creativity.

If you walk into a TV network, however, it is more akin to walking into an insurance company.

Row after row of cubicles and fluorescent lighting. Industrial carpeting.

And most remarkably, a staff that by and large are both illiterate in the medium in which they are working, and also denied access to the tools of creativity."

Read the entire post A Commitment to Literacy here. Bravos, Michael! In my experience you can learn just about everything you need to know about a media operation by its lobby, offices and the way they answer the phone, direct your call.

Gillmor Gang: Steve chats up the FriendFeed co-founders. Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit submit to the whims of the Gang. [MP3 audio w/comments] Kudos, Steve. Well done, Bret & Paul.

Congrats & cheers: Steve Harris joins ESPN Radio as Senior Director of Audio Content.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful weekend. See you next week with a brand new show.

"I'm not finished, because I'm still curious." Barry Diller

"Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion; let the artist be truly taciturn." Paul Klee

"However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words." Ivan Turgenev

Today's image: Claudia, lost in the Garage by Portrait and Fashion Photographer. Great shooting. Thank you for sharing.


Danger, Will Robinson: Thanks to Barron's scribe Alan Abelson we learn the updated report from those smart guys at hedge fund T2 Partners bears title language including "We are still in the early innings of the bursting of the housing and credit bubbles..."

Then there's the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey hitting a 28-year low, and that pesky $4-a-gallon gasoline. S&P 500 first-quarter earnings down 25.9% from the same quarter last year. [Up and Down Wall Street, 5/19]

The recent buzz about online rates is CPMs have headed south. My sense is online is still pacing up at 20 something percent. The danger for sellers is depending on the usual suspects to deliver their month. Sales leadership needs to be more focused on developing new business including new categories. While this environment is certainly challenging to sellers now is a great time for buyers to invest in advertising. Rates are attractive and you'll gain share of voice (especially valid should your competitors fail to spend). The most optimum time to advertise is when others are not. As baseball player Wee Willie Keeler famously said "...hit 'em where they ain't."

Buzz: Vegas odds say...Mr Softy buys Yahoo (at least Search now says Arrington) then Facebook (so say others). Stay tuned.

Pre-order: Outliers the new book by Malcolm Gladwell is now on offer at Amazon for $18.47 - info here. Related 800-CEO-READ

Say it ain't so: Firefox checks their own box. Do the custom install option and you can uncheck the box making Firefox your default browser. Shame on Mozilla. Opt-out, bad. Opt-in, good.

If I give you my business card, do I give you the right to publish it on the internet? The Comcast-Plaxo, CBS-CNET deals and the important data portability issue (think last week's Facebook smack down of Google) gets thrown around and the discussion is nothing less than informative, if not plainly and purely entertaining (thanks to Steve Gillmor, Sam Whitmore, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Chris Saad, Marc Canter) in the latest Gillmor Gang podcast. Don't start tomorrow without it [Audio, MP3 Heads up, NSFW - language]. Bravos, guys. Good show! [Related: Marc Canter details his argument here]

Agenda item: The issues discussed in the Gillmor Gang podcast above are more important than one might first believe. We are at the beginning, the early days of a very real "data war." This amounts to nothing less than an arms race for some kind of control of user identity. Fair warning - get deep into this issue, now. What's in your ToS (and how well you play w/others) will play a role in the future of what's in your wallet.

Congrats & cheers: May sweeps winners, Fox leads 18-49, CBS leads in households and total viewers. The strike seems to have been the primary factor in 18-49 viewing being down almost 20% vs last year. The young guns of wireless being honored by Edison Media Research [names named here] Ken Fisher and team Ars Technica acquired by Conde Nast.[Ken's announcement]

Bonus x 3: 21 Accents + Ex-Boyfriend Jewelry + Ztail

Lost in space, the reality show: They call it "The Pioneer Anomaly." For reasons yet unknown something has dragged Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 a quarter-million miles off course. Robert Lee Hotz, WSJ's Science Journal editor chats about the anomaly in the following video. Could Newton and Einstein be wrong?

"It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them." Man Ray

"Only from the entirely old can the entirely new be born." Bela Bartok

"Getting caught is the mother of invention." Robert Byrne

Today's image: Firestarter by TravelingRoths. Very interesting capture. Thanks for sharing.

Smart dead tree guy shares wisdom

Let's start our own fire this week with two stories and a jump worth your bandwidth...



Three women walked into a public restroom to find the water running. They complained loudly and continuously about the horrible people who left that faucet on. They kvetched about the insensitivity of the horrid perpetrators. On and on they griped. What, indeed, was the world coming to?

A fourth woman walked into the restroom, looked at the running faucet, and turned it off.

There are complainers in this world and there are doers.

Second story...


Recently, a friend of mine told me a story about Mike who went to Seattle to visit a friend. Mike encountered an old priest who got up early every morning, made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and walked downtown and gave them to the homeless.

Mike was moved by the old priest’s good works. So when he got home Mike wrote the priest a check and sent it to him saying it was to help his ministry. A few weeks later Mike got the check back in the mail with a note written on the check – “make your own damn sandwiches.”

These stories are taken from a speech delivered to dead tree circulation execs. Newspaper circulation leaders need to make their own sandwiches was the wake up call by Tim McGuire. Now at Arizona State, Tim previously served as editor and SVP at The Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Here's a bit more...


"Newspapers as we know them have a problem. It is a big, nasty, transformational problem. Arguments about whether it could have been avoided are the territory of second-guessers with too much time on their hands. The fact is newspapers have this problem because the world marches on.

All products have life cycles and the golden age of the newspaper product was from the 1950’s through the mid-to late 90’s. There is a lot of loose talk about newspapers being dinosaurs. If that is true, the meteor hit newspapers in the mid-90’s. It’s called the Internet."

One could easily subsitute "Broadcasters" for newspapers. One could and you should. Here's the advertised jump. If you read just one item today, click only on one link today, please let me recommend this one. You'll thank me later. Read and send a link to those you know who are serious about making something happen. Bravos, Tim! Well said.

Get social: Google bows Friend Connect - an app that helps to make any site social. Conference call today (12:30 pm Eastern) to discuss, replay available. Kudos to team Google. More info here.

Bonus video: Mark Williamson, Dash Technologies at Web 2.0 must see video. Congrats and cheers to Rob Curry on a very cool presentation. Jump to blip.tv here, use the right nav to find and view the video by Mark Williamson. While you're there check out Google's Matt Cutts - he offers an excellent talk on spam.

Podcasts - Best of: Hugh and the Rabbi, Episode 4 (Audio, MP3). Good show guys! The Gillmor Gang, on decentralized Twitter (Audio, MP3). Great discussion, follow-on to an earlier cast on Twitter, FriendFeed, and other Live Web apps. Kudos, Steve, well done.

Buzz: BlackBerry Bold. 60 Photography Links You Can't Live Without via Cameraporn - thanks to the uber-cool Thomas Hawk for the tip.

Congrats & cheers: Chris Anderson & team TED on the smash that was Pangea Day. [Related - highlight reel]

"If all else fails, immortality can always be achieved by a spectacular mistake." J.K. Galbraith

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." Francis Bacon

"The secret isn't counting the beans, it's growing more beans." Roberto Goizueta

Today's image: The 3 Croakers by Fred Winston. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

The Gillmor Gang - Emergency Edition 05.03.08, Podcast/MP3 audio (68:18) - Steve Gillmor, Mike Arrington, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Dana Gardner and Robert Anderson. Discussion of the Yahoo-Microsoft mess. Is Yahoo toast? Is Google the big winner? Microsoft to fight another day? They need to become a player in the advertising space. Steve says "Yahoo sounds like the car companies in Detroit in the seventies and eighties, they're gonna get their clocks cleaned." Kudos guys, good show. Related: Scoble's "discussion" proves a perfect illustration of the power that is the FriendFeed app, behold - check it out here.

Can I get an Amen: My thought is CBS would benefit getting Michael Rosenblum involved in a radical reinvention of the 6:30...

"CBS News is now at one of those places where, because they are in so much trouble, (ratings keep dropping to new lows each week), they could.. they could… take a really radical step. They could trash the whole unworkable system and create a very interesting digital newsroom where they could (could) hire the best journalists in the world today (look at places like Huffington Post for starters), and kick ass. With their budgets the could do it in a heartbeat!" Read the entire post Requiem for a Network.

But wait, there's more...

"Local TV stations are in trouble. They are losing viewers and they are big, ungainly, inefficient and not cost effective. They are the children of what is now an increasingly archaic technology. Local stations in major markets employ upwards of 250 people or more to put 8 or 9 camera crews and reporters on the streets every day to gather ‘news’. Is this cost effective? Does it make sense?" Read Michael's entire post, Are Newspapers Poised to Replace Local TV Stations. Randy Michaels and team Tribune would be wise to invite Michael into their discussions.

Bravos to Michael!

Video: Jim Cramer - CBS Should Go Private "...The company is the proof that primetime is not a great business anymore."

Bonus: YouTube video - Amen Break (18:08) "The world's most important 6-second drum loop."

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

George Eastman - "You press the button, we do the rest" Interesting talk by Peter Merholz: Experience is the Product. From Kodak to Apple, developing solutions. Technology > Features > Experience (Video - 47:46) Highly recommended. Aside - great to see folks catching up with the Tom Peters' experience meme.

| View | Upload your own